February 3, 2007

It was then, he says, that “I remember I grabbed the knife.” Later, asked about whether he had taken off a glove before handling the knife, Mr. Simpson says, “You know, I had no conscious memory of doing that, but obviously I must have because they found a glove there.”

According to the transcript, that moment is one of several during the interview in which Mr. Simpson, while maintaining that he is merely recounting a hypothetical narrative, says rather oddly that he cannot remember certain details.

Simpson's lawyer tries to explain. Simpson was bound by a contract with the publisher, and it required him to follow a script. The whole thing was meant as entertainment --"It was even more than entertainment... It was entertainment with a purpose, and the purpose was to sell the book." Stop, you're killing us.

12 comments:

No, but if the whole thing [were] killing you with purposeful entertainment, and you [were] to pay my client, oh, say, 3.5 mil, here's how he'd sit down for an interview with an equally narcissistic jew-hater and do it...

I was in Santa Monica working about 3-4 months before the murders. I had the occasion to meet OJ at a media event. He was an arrogant bastard hitting on every female in sight and it was more "hey i'm OJ" than anything else. That was my impression.

Anyway, my point is he could run like the wind, was a great and i mean great football and track star but after that, that was all he was...just that. nothing more.

we are the morons who think that gridiron prowess or running a 9.6 last 100 meters translates into "whatta guy".

take away his incredible skills, he was a louse, a womanizer, probably a murderer, certainly a liar and an overall real shit.

divorce the two when you talk about him. not defending him. but one is one, one is the other.

Thing brings up why I am one of the only white guys out there who believes to this day that OJ didn't do it.

One of the best known criminal defense attorneys in CO taught my criminal law class in law school. It was a great way to start law school, since he was able to entertain us with his "war stories".

This guy, who had tried a bunch of capital cases, pointed out one day that the public mostly got the premeditation wrong - in his experience, the bloodier the death, the the more passion, and the cleaner, the greater the premeditation, with some Mofia hits being almost bloodless.

Which is why the O.J. trial always bothered me. Was it a crime of passion? Or a crime of premeditation? The close timing strongly implies premeditation. But the weapon involved and the way that his ex-wife and Goldman were killed strongly implies passion.

O.J. was in Summit County, CO last summer staying at a friend's house in Breckenridge. He explained that it was a lot easier to have friends own houses and use them, than to have those worries himself. (And, wouldn't that little civil judgement against you get in the way of that too?)

In any case, he came to this end of the county to play golf at the two Keystone courses, and apparently loved them. So, all of a sudden, you have everone going crazy like, hey, he's really a great guy and might move here for the summers, etc.

What was weird about it was that at least around here, his notoriety has turned into a sort of celebrity that a lot here seemed to like. We get our share of movie stars and the like, but they are invariably low key (or they would be in Aspen, etc.) You never hear about them being great guys (or gals). Only O.J.

Weird. And yes, he still hits on all the women pretty hard, but most seemed to think that it was cute.

Bruce, I know you know this, but I’d like to indulge in an overabundance of caution to make sure nobody gets the wrong idea.

When premeditation is an element of a crime of homicide, it is the majority rule (if not the universal rule) that there is no such thing as “degrees of premeditation” and that the jury is charged to determine whether the defendant’s effective conduct was or was not the result of “premeditation.” E.g., Commonwealth v. Fisher, 564 Pa. 505, 769 A.2d 1116, 1124 (2001) (“The period of reflection necessary to constitute premeditation may be very brief; in fact the design to kill can be formulated in a fraction of a second. Premeditation and deliberation exist whenever the assailant possesses the conscious purpose to bring about death.”) (emphasis added), cert. denied, 535 U.S. 906, 122 S.Ct. 1207, 152 L.Ed.2d 145 (2002).

Thus, the defendant might have raised the club intending merely to incapacitate the victim but nevertheless the defendant committed murder in the first degree if the defendant formed the intent to kill in mid-swing and the result was death. That’s a jury question. Good criminal defense attorneys do everything they can to fool the jury into believing that “premeditation” means something akin to suiting up like Robert DeNiro in “Taxi Driver.”

I think Regan released this to exonerate herself, and IMO she did that. Even the print version is pretty damning, but this is the closest thing to an overt confession I've ever heard.

I think OJ wants to come in from the cold, to confess and be forgiven, to be loved again, to be OJ. And apparently many of his fans want that too (see Bruce's comment). I don't think we have heard the last from him.

I guess I am one of the few that would actually like the book to be published. It would be nice for the significant minority of the population (people like Bruce Hayden) to actually realize that OJ did it. While I am sure skepticism will still persist among some, I think the book will demonstrate that OJ committed the crimes he was accused of.

I realize the pain that this causes the Brown and Goldman families but I think the benefits outweight the costs, especially if the money goes to the families and not OJ.

You gotta love the hypocrisy! Once word came out that Judith Reagan was publishing the book all you could hear were gasps of horror and people making fun of Fox and Murdoch. Reagan gets ousted and the book gets stopped.

Fast forward to a few weeks later and all the juicy details, the only reason to buy such a book, is getting leaked to the public the by gaspers! Now the 'elite media' is making money off the blood of innocents or whatever over the top rhetoric was being used to excoriate Reagan and Murdoch.